1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of telecommunications and, more particularly, to a call routing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are existing methods of rerouting telephone calls. For example, call forwarding or automated answering systems exist that allow callers to reroute their telephone calls. Often, a recipient of a call would like to immediately receive certain phone calls but allow other calls to be either ignored, sent to voice mail or other devices. Caller ID can partially assist the call recipient to determine if the call should be responded to, but Caller ID has several disadvantages. For example, Caller ID is based on the number of an incoming phone and not the identity of the person making the call. This disadvantage is particularly experienced when important phone calls come from unknown numbers which many people tend to ignore. Another problem with Caller ID occurs when the recipient is not in a position to view the caller ID and therefore ignores the call. Ignoring the call could result in a voice mail responding to the call if voice mail is set up. In certain cases it might be beneficial to ignore the call completely and not allow voicemail to be stored.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,572 to Foladare, et al. discusses a method for prioritizing calls in a system where a caller and a recipient are both required to subscribe to a service to allow each of the parties to prioritize calls. If the sender does not subscribe to the service, then the calls are automatically routed to the recipient's phone as normal. If both parties subscribe, then the calls are routed based on the priorities set by the caller and recipient. Such a system is dependent on the caller and recipient setting the correct priority level for the call. This system also requires that the caller and recipient have some understanding of what the appropriate level for a given call should be and further requires that both parties adhere to an agreed upon standard.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2001/0036258A1 by Binay Sugla discusses a system for allowing a telephone subscriber to monitor and select incoming calls. The telephone subscriber is required to offer different groups of individuals several different virtual telephone numbers representing various incoming caller restrictions which are linked to a single incoming telephone line which effectively screens incoming calls without any user-intervention. This invention appears to be an inefficient use of subscriber numbers and further appears to offer a limited number of codes.